Purple Rage
by TKB17
Summary: Welcome to the universe, where everything is trying to kill you...or maybe its just me. Either way, this whole situation is way, way above my pay grade. I have no allies, lots and lots of enemies, and this is not the galaxy you remembered when playing the game. It's harsher, colder, and far more likely to leave you dead. SI with a twist, and no pairings.


Hello everyone~~! I have absolutely no idea why I decided to write this...though, personally, I blame sleep deprivation (which you can blame my grammar mistakes on as well-this isn't beta'd, so all mistakes are my own.).

This is an experiment for me, really. I have no set plot, no real timeline, just an idea that refuses to GO AWAY! Ahem.

In addition, I have no set writing style for this either. One chapter may be full of snark and sarcasm, another might be full of tears and angst. I just don't know how a chapter is going to turn out until I write it, so be prepared for tone and genre shifts.

No matter how this turns out I hope you enjoy it, and, of course, review.

**FLYINGSPACEFISHSHIPTHING **(Thats a page break, by the way)

Okay, so waking up in unfamiliar surroundings? Not something totally new to me. Waking up as a giant, cybernetic killing machine? Yeah...thats new. Lemme back up a bit.

So, the year is 2014, I'm at a party getting drunk with my friends, hitting on the attractive sorority sisters, and just all-around having a good time. It had been raining, so most of us were in the cramped house belonging to one of the party-hosts rather than hanging out all over the lawn, but despite the cramped quarters I was able to secure myself a seat at the 'bar' situated at the middle of the kitchen.

It was a good spot. The windows were cracked, in protest of the rain, and because of the location I had easy access to the food flowing out into the living room. The only downside, and this'll be important in a bit, was the giant wall of glass on one side.

'Cause right when I was cracking open my fifth beer, or so, is when Mother Nature decided that we'd had enough fun...and struck the big-ass pine tree next door with lightning. Murphy, herself deciding to get involved, then made the tree tip and rip through the power lines. That lit the monstrous pine tree _on fire_, and then it continued on towards its destination: the house in which I was currently getting drunk. It being on fire, and said house being made mostly of cheap lumber...well, add a hundred-or-so drunk and semi-drunk twenty-somethings and you can get the idea of what happened next.

Of course Murphy, being the bitch she is, couldn't end it there. Oh no. See, she decided that _I _would get the pleasure of being her entertainment on this fine evening, and thus sent the tree crashing through the glass kitchen wall to land squarely on top of me, knocking me from the stool and pinning me to the floor.

I felt lots of things break, heard the screaming of terrified students, and then nothing.

Which, and this is why I'm sure I have somehow managed to offend God as well, brings us to my current situation...that being reincarnated as a giant, purple, semi-organic death machine with a killing-organics fetish.

**FLYINGSPACESHIPFISHTHING**

Now, I don't know about you but I wake up in stages. First usually comes sound, then touch, then (if I care enough) the rest of me. Which is why when I heard absolutely nothing I went from 'sleepy' to '**HOLY FUCKING SHIT, WHERE THE HELL AM I?!**'.

The vacuum of space is a very, very quiet place. No air means no sound, and the silence can be deafening. In a panic I tried to move, but all I heard was a sort of _hum_ that vibrated through every part of me. The louder it got the more aware I became, until suddenly I could _see. _Stretching as far as I could see in _every direction_ was _nothing_...and yet...not? I could see inside of...myself? It was disorienting, and yet, somehow not any different than looking around by moving my head or turning my eyes. It was more than a little weird, and it took me a fair while to get used to...though being in space without a clock it's downright impossible to tell time anyway, so I guess it could've been anywhere from twenty minutes to a year…

I had finally managed to get a grasp how to look around, then I decided to try and move. Which involved me finally taking stock of my body...and then freaking the fuck out. I'm not a tall human, standing at only 5'10" I was pretty much average in that regard, but I'd gotten used to my body. Long hours of repeating the same tasks over and over again in yoga and marching band had made sure that I knew it extremely well, in order to take into account all of the small shifts in balance and form needed for both (Though spacial awareness? Yeah. Didn't help with that at all.), and this? This was _**not**_ my body.

And suddenly, as if that realization was not enough, I was bombarded with information. My eyes suddenly had a green and red HUD overlaid on top of them, which was _differentfor each point of view._ I had calculations and formulas running rampant through my thoughts, and yet somehow despite running diagnostics (Why did I know that?) on every part of my system (Body! What's going on?!) and for every piece of machinery (WHAT?!) I was still able to focus enough to think 'Well, shit'.

And then it got worse. Much, much worse.

Have you ever shattered a bone, or really, really badly torn something? That sudden, all consuming, mind shattering pain that flares up, and then 'fades' away into a terrible ache as your body goes "Dumbass! We're hurt! Go fix it!" and then _reminds_ you of said injury every time you move while you do everything in your power not to shriek in agony? Yeah. Suddenly I felt that in about a million places at once as bright red pop-ups appeared in places I didn't even know I could see.

**Scanning…**

**Hull breached: Sectors 2, 7, 8. Heavy damage to internal structure.**

**Repair system enabled…**

**ERROR!**

**Not enough materials detected.**

**Analyzing…**

**Priority Determined: Limited repair on internal frame-work authorized.**

**Scanning... **

**Engines heavily damaged: Efficiency: 18%.**

**Repair system enabled…**

**ERROR!**

**Manufacture units offline.**

**System disabled. **

**Scanning…**

**Drive Core: Intact, conduits damaged. Max output: 45%**

**Repair system enabled…**

**ERROR!**

**Manufacture units offline.**

**System disabled.**

**Scanning...**

**Liquid-Alloy Cannon: Heavy structural damage.**

**Attempting repair…**

**Local Manufacture Online.**

**Warning! Warning!**

**Not enough power to fire.**

**Rerouting Repair drones to Drive Core. **

**Scanning...**

**Point-Defence Turrets: Online.**

**Turret strength: 42%**

**Attempting replacement of damaged units…**

**Enabled. Spare units moving. **

**Warning!**

**Limited power: Firing at 12% capacity. **

**Scanning...**

**Life Support: Offline.**

**Enabling…**

**Warning!**

**Hull breaches in sectors 2, 7, 8.**

**Sealing internal bulkheads…**

**Bulkheads sealed. **

**Enabling...**

**Life Support: Online.**

**Scanning...**

I groaned in pain as pop-ups continued to appear. The mind numbing agony that had begun when the information barrage had started appeared to be tapering off, though there was still a definite, and very painful, ache. Though as more information filtered in I was able to at least start to make sense of the situation. My body was no longer human, for one, and two I was now apparently one of the mecha-cthulhu of the Mass Effect universe. One of many, many, thousands of 'Sovereign'-class Reaper Dreadnoughts.

Who, in all of the multi-verse, had I managed to piss off to land me in this situation? Zelretch?

But more importantly...what the fuck am I supposed to _do?_

(I seriously considered ending it here...and then I got jumped by my plot bunnies again… T.T)

**FLYINGSPACESHIPFISHTHING**

It took a small forever before I had finally stopped having a panic attack and actually started to think about my goals. First on the list was to get some fucking repairs done, because being in pain sucks. Having damage being interpreted as pain was a huge pain in the ass...and now I really want to know if this was because of the biological parts that all reapers had, or something else.

The second, and very much down the line, goal was to somehow stop the evil star-child and the rest of his minions from murdering billions of innocents...and the batarians.

Easy enough, right?

I'd done a little digging through my 'mind', as it were, and managed to drag my sorry excuse for a doomsday machine to the nearest relay. The only issue is that even though I had a full map of the relay network it didn't really help figure out where I was.

In the game you select a location to travel to and you get a straight line through regions, showing your destination. The problem is that the line shown is much like the 'line of best fit' in statistics- its a generalization, an average, of the path you take from point 'A' to point 'B'. The codex in Mass Effect makes a big deal about how in the short time humans had been exploring space they'd opened more then a hundred relays. What it doesn't mention is the human's confusion on how they other races opened so few- and the reasons why they were so confused.

Many of the relays are in empty pockets of space in the galaxy with systems located 'nearby', to better protect the relays against things like asteroids and supernovae. The trade off is that this empty space means that theres not alot of point in opening one or two at a time. Its a gamble every time you open one, and very rarely do you open a relay to find a garden world or a resource rich system within a couple hundred light-minutes of the relay itself. That means that for every relay you open you usually have to physically explore as far around it as you can in order to find the next relay in the chain, or anything else thats noteworthy.

And thats very, very expensive.

So to increase their odds of finding things worthwhile the humans just opened more relays rather than opening just one and searching everything around it. This comes with risk, like violent first contacts, but generally your odds of finding anything worthwhile are pretty low-so you increase those odds by increasing the number of variables. If you throw a pair of dice long enough, eventually you'll get a twelve. Opening a relay is cheap, and when tens of billions of credits are on the line you do everything you can score big...so the humans opened every one they could find.

The Citadel Races, however, had already struck gold with the discovery of the Attican Traverse. Rich in resources, though with comparatively little Eezo, they had no need to expand and explore their local space. Instead, they wanted to make contact with other races, push their borders outward, and make their riches elsewhere. Just like how some humans want to get away from the Alliance, many asari, turian, and salarian colonists wanted to get away from their home government. That meant putting distance between you and them-so rather then opening every relay nearby to gather the local resources, which they have plenty of, they pushed outward.

And then they hit the even more resource rich Terminus Systems, which had the Eezo they so desperately needed. That pushed expansion even faster, until their fateful encounter with the Rachni...which promptly put a halt on opening any more relays, leading directly to why theres so much looping around and doubling back in Council Space. They didn't completely open their local networks, and as result can't use the local connections to get around faster.

But what this means for me is that I have absolutely no idea what twisted path they took to establish the current routes. I could go to the closest relay and find it inactive, and though with my database I know its end point if I go opening up relays people are going to notice it fairly quickly and turian patrol groups and STG forces are _everywhere_. What most people forget when slandering the Batarian Hegemony and its practices, is that none of their raids happen in Council Space, and thats entirely because of the forces available for defence and retaliation _locally_. When Relay 314 was opened there was a quick skirmish of patrol groups followed by the Turians throwing a fleet into the fray within _days_, and the only reason that was at all possible is because of the absolutely absurd size of the Turian Military. The _only _reason the Reapers made any headway _at all_ was because of those back doors into Council Space, and that their technology was so advanced in comparison. The turians still held for _weeks_ and with krogan aid were _pushing them back_.

Hell, if the Collector Ship had _ever_ entered Council Space and attempted to attack a colony the Turians and STG would have known it almost as soon as it happened, and then proceed to slag it. If one patrol group wasn't enough then there was probably another, one relay over (which is how I knew TIM's mission to the collector ship was a damn trap. I mean come on, a turian patrol in the Terminus Systems? By _itself?_ Now, the STG I could buy, But the _turians? Really?_).

That also meant that if _I_ opened a single relay that lead into Council Space I'd be found almost immediately...and then I'd be killed...and while I'm sure my dead reaper carcass could help with the impending apocalypse I'd rather not, you know, actually _die_.

So, to prevent my inevitable death, because I'm sure the higher-powers aren't done with me yet, I needed to head _away_ from Council Space...and that meant heading into the the Terminus...but really, how much more dangerous could that possibly be?

**FLYINGSPACESHIPFISHTHING**

So, what do you think? Its a little short, I know, but hopefully longer chapters will come with time.

Now review, or angry cuttlefish will assimilate you!

V


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